The staid, slightly clubby party committee is trying to recast its image for the digital age in the hopes of matching – and someday surpassing – the gains Democrats made in targeting voters during the last two presidential elections.

The RNC Tuesday is announcing the formation of Para Bellum Labs, an in-house technology incubator that combines the committee’s data-analytics arm with its digital-marketing unit. As part of that effort, the committee is on the prowl for programmers and other engineers to staff its latest venture.

One of the Republicans’ biggest takeaways from 2012 is that Democrats have developed far more sophisticated methods to identify, persuade and turn out potential supporters, from conducting behavioral experiments to figure out which messages resonate to making television ads more cost-effective.

Para Bellum Labs is an attempt by the RNC to narrow that gap. Republicans acknowledge the Democrats’ prowess but are quick to point out that President Barack Obama‘s two successful White House campaigns built off of gains made by the GOP in 2004 to re-elect George W. Bush.

“For whatever reason, that advantage evaporated,” said Chuck DeFeo, who led digital outreach on Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign and is overseeing this latest attempt to rebuild the party’s information infrastructure in his role as the RNC’s chief digital officer. “We’ve got a strategic moment here to catch up and surpass our opposition.”

Part of the GOP’s challenge is convincing engineers and other young tech wizards to forego a private-sector career to instead help elect Republicans in federal, state and local elections. To that end, Azarias Reda, the RNC’s chief data officer, is making the rounds at top engineering schools and other tech-savvy locales to convince potential recruits that the committee offers them something other companies can’t.

“When it comes to recruiting top talent, our competition isn’t the Democratic Party – it’s the Facebooks, LinkedIns and Googles of the world,” Mr. Reda said in a release set to go out Tuesday.

Added RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, “Through Para Bellum Labs we will continue bringing in top talent to inspire innovative products to power campaigns and change the way we do business in the Republican Party.”

In an era when outside groups can drown out either party or the individual campaigns with television ads, the RNC is trying to retain its foothold as the party’s primary source for voter contact data. This push is an attempt to collect more information about individual donors and make the outreach process more accessible for individual campaigns. In January alone, the team collected 169,000 new email addresses that will give it another avenue to reach voters.

The RNC has even redecorated space on the first floor of its Washington, D.C., headquarters to look more like the bright, open offices often associated with tech startups, complete with walls made of dry-erase boards and lots of Apple products. Even the office attire is decidedly more casual than the coat-and-tie ethos of other departments.

In its pitch, the RNC is trying to convince these engineers that they will have all of the freedom of a startup to create new ways to improve turnout as well as a guaranteed funding stream that most Silicon Valley ventures would covet.

“We are here to push the envelope when it comes to how you manage, analyze and take advantage of data,” Mr. Reda said in a video that accompanies the launch.

In another nod to the Obama campaign, the committee is trying to tap some of the same idealistic zeal that is driving young engineers to create new online applications and other digital tools in the name of progress.

In a video to promote the new effort, one member of the new data team says, “The cool thing about this is the fact that I am literally working to elect the next president…You can go try to work on the West Coast and potentially make a cool app, or you can actually physically change history.”

The name, however, serves as a subtle reminder that this new wing of the RNC isn’t solely devoted to high-minded ideals.

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